Battles in Mutsu province

History

Mutsu Province was originally called 'Michi no oku' or 'Michinoku'--literally the province at the end of the land. Over time, this was slurred to 'Mutsu'. It probably designated territory that was not controlled by the Yamato polity, and the territory appears to have been managed instead by local chieftains of the Emishi who were co-opted (peaceably or forcefully) into the Tenno-centered Yamato government. It appears to have been designated by some point after the assassination of the Soga chieftain in 645, when the court established provinces and districts in the northeast.

Between 647 and 648, the first of a series of Yamato stockades in Emishi territory were established in Mutsu, including areas that would later become Echigo Province. In 718, portions of Michinoku and Hitachi Province were split off to form Iwaki and Iwashiro provinces, which were dissolved and reabsorbed only a few years later. There were clashes between the Yamato and Emishi people throughout the 8th century, and in 774 Emishi attacked Momou Stockade in Michinoku, prompting the beginning of the pacification wars. Otomo Surugamaro was sent to pacify the region as a reaction to these attacks, but after destroying the Emishi's base near Momou, he was forced to halt the campaign due to a riot of the construction workers working on building a new stockade.

In 780, Iji-no-kimi Atamaro--a district official--began the largest Emishi revolt up to that time. His objective was to kill two rival government officials, Michishima Otate and Ki Hirozumi, due to an insult from the former. To that end he attacked the Iji Stockade and then the Taga Stockade in the south. This appeared to have been caused because Otate, an official in the nearby Oshika district, had referred to Atamaro, an Emishi chieftain who had been made a senior district chief, as a 'tamed barbarian'.

Similar uprisings followed, and Tamo-no-kimi Aterui took up the leadership of this resistance. In 789, Aterui defeated a larger force at the Battle of Kitakami River, and remained at-large until 801, when he was defeated by Sakanoue Tamuramaro. Fighting continued until a court edict in 805, with one last campaign in 811, after which the pacification of the area was considered complete by Imperial edict. Emishi chieftains continued to manage districts in the province through at least the 9th century, as the Emishi were incorporated into the larger Japanese polity under the Ritsuryo system of government.